Category Archives: Verse

Come Joe Sardine In My Flying Machine

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Used to be flying was a comfortable way to go. But no longer. Hours waiting at the terminal, bag fees, the endless security lines, small seats, no legroom, no going to the bathroom one hour before landing, somebody sneaking a smoke and setting the toilet on fire, and now the airlines are considering a new seating arrangement that will jam more people into the same sized airplane. Yes, it’s coming, folks, pretty soon the face to face seating arrangement will be standard, and people will be jammed together like the proverbial sardines, the only difference between the passengers and the occasional casket in the cargo hold is the dead are far more comfortable.  I believe they wrote about this situation, way back at the dawn of the aeroplane, in a song called Come Josephine In My Flying Machine.

 

 

Come Joe Sardine in my flying machine

And it’s up we go, up we go

And no you can’t smoke

And the seating’s a joke

As it’s up we go, up we go

Oh, oh, a little bit higher

Oh no, the toilet’s on fire

Come Joe Sardine in my flying machine

Going up, so long, goodbye

 

 

A Drumroll, Please!

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With the retirement of Justice Stevens, President Obama has an historic opportunity. I submit the seat should be filled by lottery.

 

 

With Justice Stevens going home

Obama has the choice

Of nominating someone who

Will give another voice

To members of communities

Who are excluded now

From serving on the Court because

They simply don’t know how

How many people in this land

Are not a law school grad

How many unemployed right now

Just need a job real bad

A lottery, ten bucks a shot

We all can play this game

A great big drum of ID slips

Let Oprah pick a name

But why stop there, there’s other jobs

That anyone can fill

Age thirty-five and citizen

And you just fit that bill

Senators and congressmen

Let’s designate by lot

I guarantee that what we get

Are better than we’ve got

 

 

Tea Parties – Hinges Of History?

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Not to get the big picture too big, but we may be at the beginning of one of those Hinges Of History future historians will write about at length, much along the lines of the political realignment that saw the demise of the Whigs. The Tea Partiers are working from the ground up to capture and remake or restore the Republican Party to conservative first principles. Will it work? Who knows. But what we do know is that every event has a presaging event, and that event a presaging event, and so on, without which the event would not have happened. With the Tea Parties that event was the election of Barack Obama and his immediate voyage to change the economic and political system of the United States to European style socialism. Had Hillary or John McCain been elected it is doubtful either would have pursued the course Obama chose, and thus no Tea Parties. In my view the Tea Parties are the culmination of events that began long ago. Pick your starting point. Any will do. If Winston Churchill had not persuaded a reluctant British Cabinet in September 1914 to declare war on Germany, Germany would have won a small scale European war by Christmas 1914, territory would have been exchanged, five empires would have remained intact, there would have been no Stalin, no Hitler, no World War 2, no flight to the moon in 1969. The entire history of the world these past 95+ years would have been different. But Churchill’s speech to the Cabinet in 1914 had its own presaging events, without which Churchill would not have given the speech. So where to start? We are where we are. Churchill’s speech that led to a four year war that toppled European civilization, was, I believe, one of the Hinges Of History. It remains to be seen if the Tea Party movement is a Hinge Of History, but I think it has the makings of being one.

 

 

When citizens have had enough

When citizens get mad

They grumble, mumble curse and fret

When seeing things go bad

Obama promised hope and change

All with a wink and smirk

And once in office said that he’d

Make socialism work

He gave GM to union friends

He raised the debt to heights

That gave the decent citizens

The screaming, reaming frights

He tore apart our great health care

The finest in the world

By buying votes and making deals

All done with wet lips curled

And so the people of this land

Assembled as their right

And formed a party to oppose

Hussein with all their might

They march with placards proudly high

They march to the attack

The Tea Parties are here to say

They want their country back

 

 

A Whole Lot Of Ifs

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Pundits and economists now argue that if the US can increase its exports, if it can turn the current economic crisis into downsizing business opportunities, if it can successfully develop more domestic energy resources, if President Obama taxes investment less and consumption more then America can begin “a long overdue rebalancing”. That’s an awful lot of Ifs.

 

 

IF, by Rudyard Crippling

 

If you can lose your jobs but hope your exports be increased

If you can hope your plans for windmills breed success

If you can tax them more and yet the downsizing be ceased

If you can raise the debt and still survive the mess

If you can hold your head up high despite the polls

If you can throw your friends and allies ‘neath the bus

If you can ram the healthcare through to meet your goals

If you can crash and burn and blame it all on us

If you can leave the country bitter, broke and sore

If you can put your commie friends in highest place

If you can drive the ship of state upon the shore

If you can lie to all with still a smiling face

If you can do these things and know that you’re the One

Then you are truly Oba Man, my son

 

 

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

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The country is so bitterly divided no one hears what the other is saying. Each side talks to itself, with the other side the hated Other. The once great Democratic party of Truman and Kennedy has been captured by the radical haters of the Left, who have no use for civility or for much of anything else besides their own hatreds. They see a country full of hate, full of venom, full of vitriol, and do not realize they are looking in a mirror.

 

I had a revealing experience many years ago. I came upon my Irish setter pup staring at a full length back of a door bedroom mirror, rigid as stone. He could see there was something looking back at him, but since there was no smell, his primary sense, all his instincts told him there was nothing there. Yet clearly there was. I think there are a lot of people like my long gone but never forgotten Irish setter pup; they see reflections and believe there is something there, not realizing the reflection is them.

 

 

TO A LOOKING GLASS

 

Reflections of an empty room

A curtain moving in the breeze

A passing figure briefly seen

It cares not all for what it sees

The heirloom hanging in the hall

Reflects the living, not the dead

Who are still there, beneath the new

Who will in time have in their stead

The newer still, the living shades

Mere visitors, a constant frieze

The mirror hangs there, silent, still

Not caring all for what it sees

 

 

Why Do They Love Us?

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The Wall Street Journal has a report on a study done by the on-line Face Research Laboratory of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Some 4,800 white women from various countries participated in the on-line study, and were shown two faces of the same man, one digitally slightly feminized, and asked which they preferred. The study showed that young white women from the developed world preferred the feminized men. The lab’s conclusion was that women from healthier countries preferred feminized men, while women from less healthy countries preferred the more masculine men. Of course, in the eyes of the Scottish researchers, a healthy country was one that had socialized medicine. I don’t think socialized medicine has anything to do with it. I think women living in the western nanny states, including the United States, no longer need a man to provide and protect, that now being provided by the state, and so they prefer men who look more like them. You know, sensitive and caring. Not that I believe for a moment that women prefer feminized men to masculine men. The question is, why do they love us at all?    

 

 

Why do women redden lips

They redden them for me

Why do women blush their cheeks

They blush them just for thee

Why do women love a man

They love us just because

Why do women love a child

With love that gives us pause

Why do women walk this earth

Alongside men they love

It’s all because it seemed so right

To the good Lord up above

 

 

Start Your Engines

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President Obama has concluded a Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement (START) with Russia that will cut the legal limits on warheads by 30% and launchers by 50%. This at a time when everyone else is gearing up for a run for the nuclear roses. START made sense in a bi-polar world, where the nuclear powers were the US, Britain and France on one side and the USSR on the other. But how much sense does it make today when Pakistan, India, Israel, China and North Korea are nuclear powers, with Iran soon to be included. And once Iran has nuked up, then everyone in the Middle East will nuke up. START seems to be a good name for it. The race is on. Start your engines.   

 

 

The world had much a safer stance

When there were only four

‘Twas us and Russkies, Brits and France

But now, who’s keeping score?

There’s India and Pakistan

And China and the Norks

And Israel and soon Teheran

The road has many forks

And soon the Saudis and Iraq

Will nuke up just in case

The mullahs run it off the track

And then, without a trace

The Middle East just disappears

In flame and smoke and sand

And fighting’s back to bows and spears

Between each camel band

A nuke exchange, if come to pass

Within the Middle East

Would see those countries turned to glass

That we would miss the least

 

 

The End Of The Day, Or Just The End?

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This is the first year Social Security has paid out more than it has taken in, a development the experts said would be delayed many years. But it is here. The soft underbelly of Europe, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, are beset with debt crises that threaten the very existence of the Eurozone. Rapidly mounting and unsustainable debt in the United States is about to bring the entire world economy crashing down in smoking ruins. And the answer? Borrow more money. And so it goes, and so we go, merrily over the cliff, unless we do something about it, starting in November 2010. 

 

 

At dawn, the night sky painted pink

With rose and amber hue

The Founding Fathers had to think

The morning loved us too

 

The rising sun climbed in the sky

Too bright for us to view

We strode the world and we knew why

The noontime loved us too

 

Now sunset draws the curtain low

And sky turns dusk from blue

And sadly full well do I know

The evening saddens too

 

The risen sun is setting now

Some say our course is run

But patriots refuse to bow

To Diktats from the One

 

We’ll fly our banner high again

The lefty cretins gone

We’ll take our country back and then

A glorious new dawn

 

 

Same Day, Different Rage

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The Israelis are restoring an ancient synagogue deliberately destroyed by the Jordanians during the 1948 war of Independence. The synagogue is in the Jewish part of Jerusalem, part of the State of Israel, where the government of Israel has every legal right to build or restore a synagogue or anything else. Naturally, the Palestinians called for a Day of Rage to protest this insult to Islam. Ho hum. Another day of rage, another day of killing Jews, another day of setting fire to cars and buildings. Why do the Palestinians act this way? Because they know the Israelis are a civilized people and will not kill them. The Romans would have taken only so much and then would have killed all the men and sold the women and children into slavery. But the Palestinians are safe. They know the Jews will never do to them what they will do to the Jews if they ever get the chance.

 

 

Another day, another rage

It’s what the Palis do

You’d think that they would turn the page

And get a job or two

Instead they hang around all day

And mutter, gripe and whine

They think if Jews just go away

Then everything’d be fine

You say to them if Israel

Just left they’d not get fed

There’d be no work and this way will

Not work, but in their head

They think when someone kills the Jews

Then money will flow in

And everyone will get to choose

Whose house he will go in

Which Jewish business he will own

Whose car he’d like to drive

With Jewish riches they’ll have shown

The world that those who strive

To make the good life for themselves

To earn an honest wage

By grabbing stuff from off the shelves

All got by days of rage

 

 

Happy Easter!

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Today, Christians throughout the world celebrate the resurrection of the crucified Christ. Repeating Good Friday’s post, verse-afire brings those long ago yet everlasting events to a close by reprising those

 

THREE DAYS IN JERUSALEM

 

 

Down the stone laid street, past the jeering crowd

Whipped and scourged, thorn crowned and bloody browed

Prodded by soldiers, laughed at by some

Carrying his cross, His Father’s time come

On Calvary hill he laid the cross down

In the distance lay shining Jerusalem town

They nailed him by hands, a spike through his feet

Then raised the cross high in the afternoon heat

A legend was posted for all to peruse

Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews

The soldiers all laughed as the man hung his head

Casting lots for his clothes before he was dead

He asked for a drink and received a sharp spear

The blood and the water signaled death was quite near

His eyes raised to heaven, He cried out in pain

Oh Father, dear Father, I shall see you again

His ordeal was over, in tomb did He lay

While soldiers stood guard by night and by day

He lay there all day and the following night

But on Sunday morn, with the coming of light

He rose from the dead, His Father’s work done

And stepped from the tomb to greet the new sun

Announcing His presence to those he held dear

He told them His Father’s salvation was near

He ascended  to Heaven, his earthly life through

Having died for our sins, and for me and for you

 

HAPPY EASTER